You will produce a written pay case and rehearse the conversation before you have it.
You've now got the parts of a pay negotiation: a market range, a view of the whole package, an answer to the salary question, a counter-offer and a plan for raising pay with your manager. This project puts them together for a conversation you're actually going to have, either a job offer or a raise, and makes you rehearse it before it's real.
Joanne, from lesson 7.5, Ask for a raise or promotion with a case, is the worked example. Her figures are examples.
Produce two things. The first is a one-page pay case: a written summary of why you should be paid what you're asking, with your evidence, your ask and your fallbacks. The second is a recorded role-play of the conversation, with a friend playing your manager or the hiring manager, followed by a revised script.
Allow about 45 minutes: 20 for the case, 15 for the role-play and 10 to revise.
Your case has four parts, and each should fit in a few lines.
Your role now. One or two sentences on what you do today, especially anything that has grown since you were hired or since your last review. Joanne: "I lead customer operations with a team of seven, including returns, which I took over in June."
Your results, with numbers. Three to five lines, each a specific outcome. Joanne's: team grown from four to seven, three hires trained, returns process taken over, complaints backlog cut from about two weeks to three days.
How your scope has grown. What you do now that wasn't in your original job description. For Joanne, people management and the returns process.
Market data, with sources. Two or three data points from lesson 7.1, Find your market rate from real sources, each with the source and date. Joanne notes the range for operations managers in two recruiter guides, and in listings on MyCareersFuture for similar team sizes.
If you're preparing for a job offer instead, replace results at your current job with what you'll bring to the new role, and use the role's own listing as one of your data points.
Write one specific ask with its reason. Joanne's: "An increase from S$5,000 to S$5,400 a month, based on the growth in my scope and the market rate for operations managers with teams of this size."
Then add two fallback asks for if the main one isn't possible. Good fallbacks cost the company less than base pay, as lesson 7.2 explained. Joanne's are a change of title to operations manager, and a formal review at six months instead of twelve. Write them down now so you're not inventing them under pressure.
Write out the first two minutes of the conversation. For a raise, that's how you open the topic, your summary of results, and your ask. Joanne's opening:
"Thanks for making time. I'd like to talk about my pay and role ahead of this year's review. Over the past year my scope has grown quite a bit, and I'd like to walk you through it and make a request."
Then prepare for the two answers you're most likely to hear. For "there's no budget this year", plan to ask what would need to be true and to agree a date to revisit, as lesson 7.5 suggested. For "not yet" or "you're not quite ready", plan to ask what specifically is missing, and whether you can agree on how it'll be measured. Write a line or two for each.
Ask a friend to play your manager. Give them your case and a short brief: be fair but not easy, and use one of the two hard answers at some point. Record the conversation on your phone.
Then listen back. Notice where you hesitated, where you over-explained, and where you apologised. Notice whether you stopped talking after your ask or rushed to fill the silence, the habit lesson 4.3, Open with an ambitious number and a reason, warned about. Revise the parts of your script that felt weak, and if there's time, run it once more.
A finished project has a one-page case covering your role, results with numbers, growth in scope and market data with sources. It has a specific ask with a reason and two fallback asks. It has a script for the first two minutes and written responses to "no budget" and "not yet". And it has a recording of at least one role-play, with notes on what you changed afterwards.
Most people find the recording uncomfortable to listen to. That discomfort is the point. Every hesitation you hear now is one your manager won't hear later. The activity asks you to complete the case, run the recorded role-play and revise the script where it felt weak.
Write the one-page case, run a recorded role-play, and revise the script where it felt weak.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).